New Documentary Puts a Young Woman's Face on Paralysis

A new documentary shines a hopeful spotlight on something we rarely see: a young woman living with paralysis.  I've only seen a short trailer (below) but what I saw was powerful: a young, vibrant woman in the prime of her life who also happens to be paralyzed from the chest down.

Cody Unser has transverse myelitis (TM), a neurological disorder caused by inflammation across both sides of one level, or segment, of the spinal cord. Ten years ago, she collapsed during a middle school basketball game, stricken with migraine headache-like pain. By the next day, she was paralyzed.

Later that year, Cody started her foundation, the Cody Unser First Step Foundation, which raises research funds to fight paralysis and to build awareness of transverse myelitis. Now she has partnered with the Reeve Foundation to produce what promises to be a fascinating documentary, Cody: The First Step.

The short trailer is a little awkward. Clips of Cody going to classes, doing rehab and scuba diving are interspersed with a primer of the latest spinal cord research from her doctor at Johns Hopkins, Douglass Kerr, MD PhD. According to Dr. Kerr, "We're at the point where we can begin to say if we understand the damage, we can now, in a very specific way, start to repair that damage." In other words, "[Cody's] not going to be an old lady when she walks again. She's going to be a young lady when she walks."

In a word: Wow.

I wish I could've watched this film four and a half years ago, when I had a freakish spinal cord injury and was paralyzed from the neck down. I've been extremely lucky. With a lot of hard work and quite a few miracles, I've regained most of my mobility. (Read more about my story here.)

Still, this has been the most isolating experience of my entire life. Prior to my injury, I had known very few women and girls who were paralyzed or used a wheelchair for mobility. In fact, I can count them on one hand. One was a friend who I attended a two-week summer camp with every year for most of my childhood. There were two others: a classmate from middle school and a college student who lived in the same dorm I did. The only "famous" woman I can ever recall using a wheelchair is the actress who plays Sharon Newman's mom on the "Young and the Restless". (Sharon will always be a Newman to me. Sorry, Shack fans.)

I've had no one to identify, no role models. After I stabilized medically, I was sent to rehab for two months to learn to adjust to life as a quadriplegic.  During my time on the spinal cord rehab unit at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee, there were only two other women there. There were only four men under thirty. The rest were middle-aged or elderly men. The message was clear: this doesn't happen to women, especially young women.

A study done by the Reeve Foundation found that women are less than half (46%) of people living with paralysis and women are barely more than a third (39%) of those who have experienced a spinal cord injury. The study also showed that people (men and women) under 40 accounted only 19.4% of people living with paralysis and they are 24.5% of people with spinal cord injuries. I could do a bunch of nifty math to figure out what percentage of the under-40 crowd living with paralysis/spinal cord injuries is women, but suffice it to say, my experience is true: we are a rare breed.

What I love about this documentary, from what little I've seen, is that it uses a intelligent, articulate, healthy twenty-two year old woman not just as a symbol that someday there will be a cure for paralysis but as proof that regardless of your ability, you can live a full, productive life.

Watch the trailer:

Cody's Trailer from Richelle Hecker on Vimeo.

Cody: The First Step has been made available to PBS. For information on how to request that your local PBS station air the documentary, click here.